Funding Added Above President’s Requests for Research and Suicide Prevention

Proposed Cuts to Housing Restored

July 25, 2006

This past week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a range of spending bills for FY 2007 covering a broad range of agencies and programs, including mental illness research and services, housing, and veterans programs. This follows previous action in the House earlier this summer. While these bills – which cover federal discretionary spending – are supposed to be finished prior to the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, it is unlikely that Congress will act further on them before the upcoming mid-term elections in November. Instead, the House and the Senate are likely to have to come back as part of a post-election “lameduck” session to complete action on these spending bills.

For NAMI, these bills represent critical federal priorities with respect to mental illness research, services, housing, and veterans programs. The actions taken by the Senate Appropriations Committee are especially important since in many cases they counter efforts to cut funding for specific programs, including medical research and housing. In several key instances, the Senate Appropriations Committee was able to shift overall spending authority to restore funding for high priorities.

For details on each of these spending bills, please click on the following links: